3 ms·

You should try to optimize for the best quality of life for the longest amount of time possible (you could consider the expected value quality * time). I'd rath

You should try to optimize for the best quality of life for the longest amount of time possible (you could consider the expected value quality * time). I'd rather live a mostly pretty good life for many years than a good life for half of those years. If the people working on aging treatments are right (and I imagine they probably are if you set a long time horizon), we'll eventually be able to live for hundreds of years without any of the effects of aging. Eliminating aging and most disease would improve the average quality of life far more than probably anything else we could possibly do within the same time span. Of course dramatically extending lifespans will have a huge impact on the world, but we'll almost certainly have other shock absorbers by then to minimize the externalities. (The same things we'd be doing to deal with overpopulation from birth rates, etc.) And once/if the technology is universally available, free, and safe, the majority of people will almost certainly opt in to it within a generation or sooner. You can be a conscientious objector if you like, but that doesn't mean you have a right to try to prevent a near-uncountable number of total hours of human flourishing. Comparing eliminating aging to retaining pollution is a much more naive take than what the parent posted, I think. I would consider it the opposite: hindering funding and progress towards treatment of aging is like blocking initiatives to fight climate change and fossil fuel proliferation, except possibly with even more dire consequences for humans in the long term than what climate change might pose.

lm28469 7y ago
But again that's a very naive view of the thing. Just as a reminder: people are dying right now because they can't afford insulin to treat their diabetes in the USA, and you hypothesise that the treatment to cure ageing would be free. We could stop world hunger and cure most diseases in developing countries right now if we didn't spend our money on useless things, but we don't. You're far too optimistic. > Eliminating aging and most disease would improve the average quality of life far more than probably anything else we could possibly do within the same time span. Not working 60% of you awake time from 20 to 65 would probably have a bigger impact on your quality of life than working 60% of your awake time from 20 to 165. Heck, universal healthcare in the US would have a bigger impact on Americans' quality of life than living 100 years more, and it would be faaaar easier to get.
- meowface 7y ago
  We're talking about very different time scales. Of course more mortally-urgent matters should be prioritized. But it's like the debate over people trying to set up backup planets when there's still so much that can be done to clean up Earth. I think all of those remedies need to be pursued simultaneously, rather than this simplistic "how could you possibly imagine colonizing another planet when we still have all of these issues???" argument. Colonization supporters are thinking about where (or if) we're going to be in centuries. It's not a fair comparison. >We could stop world hunger and cure most diseases in developing countries right now if we didn't spend our money on useless things, but we don't. You're far too optimistic. In theory there's enough money to solve almost every problem (homelessness, hunger, carbon emissions), but it's about the effective and efficient use of resources. That's why they haven't been solved. There's probably also a bit of a Mythical Man Month effect (more money/people/effort thrown into the same thing may have highly diminishing returns, in addition to all the higher potential for theft and corruption). It's difficult to imagine universal anti-aging and near-biological immortality without universal healthcare, elimination of poverty and hunger, and no requirement for people to work much (the last one could turn out false, though working at 165 doesn't sound so awful if you have the mind and body of a 30-year-old and if you can still live comfortably if you aren't working). You need a basic good level of health if you want to prevent deterioration and death; it would be a total lie to proclaim you've cured death when there are people who are starving. I would agree those are basic prerequisites for a non-aging civilization. I think it's all part of the same thing - each part is being worked on by the people with the most expertise to combat the respective problems, and they all have a common goal of improving the quality and quantity of life for all of humanity, now and indefinitely into the future. And hopefully it'll eventually apply to all conscious life we become aware of or create. Yes, in terms of what would have the biggest impact in the next decade, universal healthcare for Americans would rank far higher than tripling the longevity budget. But it's a tricky calculation when you're dealing with very long time scales. If one were to hypothetically cut all longevity funding in order to implement universal healthcare, then over the next 100 years it would be a more than worthwhile investment, but over the next few thousand? Maybe not. We should be fighting for all of those things. The question is to try to analyze as objectively as possible how to best allocate resources to achieve the most good for the most people over all time scales.

lm28469 7y ago

But again that's a very naive view of the thing. Just as a reminder: people are dying right now because they can't afford insulin to treat their diabetes in the USA, and you hypothesise that the treatment to cure ageing would be free. We could stop world hunger and cure most diseases in developing countries right now if we didn't spend our money on useless things, but we don't. You're far too optimistic. > Eliminating aging and most disease would improve the average quality of life far more than probably anything else we could possibly do within the same time span. Not working 60% of you awake time from 20 to 65 would probably have a bigger impact on your quality of life than working 60% of your awake time from 20 to 165. Heck, universal healthcare in the US would have a bigger impact on Americans' quality of life than living 100 years more, and it would be faaaar easier to get.

meowface 7y ago
We're talking about very different time scales. Of course more mortally-urgent matters should be prioritized. But it's like the debate over people trying to set up backup planets when there's still so much that can be done to clean up Earth. I think all of those remedies need to be pursued simultaneously, rather than this simplistic "how could you possibly imagine colonizing another planet when we still have all of these issues???" argument. Colonization supporters are thinking about where (or if) we're going to be in centuries. It's not a fair comparison. >We could stop world hunger and cure most diseases in developing countries right now if we didn't spend our money on useless things, but we don't. You're far too optimistic. In theory there's enough money to solve almost every problem (homelessness, hunger, carbon emissions), but it's about the effective and efficient use of resources. That's why they haven't been solved. There's probably also a bit of a Mythical Man Month effect (more money/people/effort thrown into the same thing may have highly diminishing returns, in addition to all the higher potential for theft and corruption). It's difficult to imagine universal anti-aging and near-biological immortality without universal healthcare, elimination of poverty and hunger, and no requirement for people to work much (the last one could turn out false, though working at 165 doesn't sound so awful if you have the mind and body of a 30-year-old and if you can still live comfortably if you aren't working). You need a basic good level of health if you want to prevent deterioration and death; it would be a total lie to proclaim you've cured death when there are people who are starving. I would agree those are basic prerequisites for a non-aging civilization. I think it's all part of the same thing - each part is being worked on by the people with the most expertise to combat the respective problems, and they all have a common goal of improving the quality and quantity of life for all of humanity, now and indefinitely into the future. And hopefully it'll eventually apply to all conscious life we become aware of or create. Yes, in terms of what would have the biggest impact in the next decade, universal healthcare for Americans would rank far higher than tripling the longevity budget. But it's a tricky calculation when you're dealing with very long time scales. If one were to hypothetically cut all longevity funding in order to implement universal healthcare, then over the next 100 years it would be a more than worthwhile investment, but over the next few thousand? Maybe not. We should be fighting for all of those things. The question is to try to analyze as objectively as possible how to best allocate resources to achieve the most good for the most people over all time scales.